If the baroque opulence of San Simeon is a monument to the
excesses of unrestrained capitalism, imagine a somewhat
smaller version dedicated to the excesses of one man's
personal sexuality. While Hugh Hefner's taste in décor
—with a painting of himself smiling benignly down at
visitors in the entranceway— might be considered
blithely patrician these days, his influence on world culture
is undeniable, not to mention ongoing.

When a dozen of the magazine's most beautiful starlets
arrive to check out the Versailles of free love, the mood is
a nostalgic one. Clips of Hef's salad days (hosting the likes
of Jack Nicholson, etc.) at his in-house disco are
interspersed with shots of the girls roaming the halls
looking at the hundreds of celebrity pictures lining the
walls. (It may also be interesting to note that Hef's office,
piled high with videotapes, is not unlike AVN's own
Gene Ross' office —minus the Victorian bed.)

The girls decide to shake off the metaphoric dust and
breathe some life into the mammary-funded museum. What
follows is a tour you'll never get at Hearst Castle. The
impossibly perfect females run free, playing strip poker,
taking luxurious showers, steam baths, and massages... having
pillow fights... watching a softcore film in the screening
room.... and swimming in the famous grotto. Naked, naked,
naked.

That's about all —but isn't that all you need? In an
era where uninhibited sex has been replaced by a generation
of habitual masturbators safely pleasuring themselves to
AIDS-free hardcore porn, the Playboy mystique still manages
to hold a tight romantic reign on the imagination.